'Not a single page has survived': The Library of Delhi’s Natural History Museum loses 'priceless' books and journals in fire

A day after the huge fire, it has been discovered that Delhi’s Natural History Museum has lost its entire library.

Spread across the fifth floor of the edifice, it is said to have housed over 60,000 books, bound journals and old editions of Indian and international wildlife magazines.

Experts say it was the biggest bibliographic collection on natural history in India. Several hundred books in it were handwritten or ‘last prints’, and hence, lost forever.

A day after the huge fire, it has been discovered that Delhi’s Natural History Museum has lost its entire library

Generations of academicians, scientists and forest officers - who grew over the library, relying on its collection for authentic and valuable research - rued its loss.

A museum official said anonymously, “We have been allowed inside only today (Wednesday). As the fire begun on the sixth floor, it quickly spread below and fed on our books and leather volumes. Not even a single page has survived. All is ashes.”

It had classic textbooks on classification of animals from invertebrates to vertebrates and forest classification.

It had handwritten books by surveyors from the British era with rare info on India’s flora and fauna species in the 19th and 20th century.

Besides, it was the proud recipient of several prestigious personal book collections such as the Elwin collection, Satyam Bhai collection, Dr LP Sihare collection, Desikacharya collection and the Heeramanek collection.

VG Gogate, a retired scientist from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), said, “This was a unique collection which went back hundreds of years.

“As MSc students of Environmental Biology, Delhi University, in the year 1992, we had regular visiting faculty from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). That’s how we had access to its library which I consider as one of the finest libraries in the world.”